I’m interested to know how the US and the USSR became such enemies. I heard it explained that Soviet leaders wanted to rule the world, and the United States was the only thing that stood in their way. That seems overly nationalistic to me, IMO. So what’s the deal?
The immediate cause was most likely Stalin’s abrogation of the agreement at Yalta to allow democratic elections in Eastern Europe.
However, the Cold War was probably inevitable to some extent. For the first time, there were only two Great Powers in the world (some believed Napoleonic France and Britain constituted a bipolar world, but Russia proved them wrong.) In such circumstances, it is extremely likely that the Great Powers will view the situation as a zero sum game - any gain by the other power must be a loss for my side.
When you add to that that Soviet rhetoric was explicitly expansionist, in keeping with Communist ideology, it is not surprising that the U.S. was very paranoid.
Sua
I won’t presume to say what “began” the Cold War. There are at least three things, though, that I think enabled it to begin.
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Immediately after during WWII (and of course during its later stages), both sides were still armed, mobilized, and ready to strike (or so the other side felt). Given the distrust between the two, it was hard for either nation to ignore the potential for disaster if they buired their heads in the sand.
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Of greater importance, IMHO, was the presence of nuclear weapons and the potential inherent therein for catastrophe. Once the USSR developed the bomb (when was that, '48?), the USA and its leaders were terrified that there was a nonzero chance that “freedom and liberty” could quite possibly lose out to the Communists. This concern was made all the more believable in their minds given the World’s recent experience with Hitler and how close he came to victory.
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Although the fighting may have stopped in May 1945, the mindset of WWII (secrecy, worries about spies, fear of invasion, fear of loss of country and all it stood for…) did not. The psychology of the Cold War was merely an extension of the same sense of urgency and threat that was engendered by Hitler and the hot war.
The Soviet Union certainly made plenty of noise about spreading Communist revolution around the world, which alarmed the United States and Western Europe, but that’s hardly the primary reason for the Cold War. The main reason is that in the 1940’s the Soviet Union was emerging from a really horrific fight for survival with Nazi Germany (something like 70x the casualties of the U.S.) and saw its hard-won security evaporating in the face of a U.S. nuclear threat.
At the end of WWII, after years of weakness, the Soviet Union had finally succeeded in establishing a cordon sanitaire of client states that would prevent future invasions from Western Europe and guarantee the security of the Russian heartland. Unfortunately, at the same moment the development of nuclear weapons was making that paritcular defensive strategy obsolete. Paranoid about showing weakness and frightened by being at the mercy of the Americans, the leadership in Moscow responded by presenting an aggressive front. America, skittish from Russian world-domination rhetoric and seeing its own heartland threatened by nuclear missiles as well, became more aggressive itself. Voila … Cold War.
The U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were never on what could be called affable terms, and their “friendship” lasted a scant four and a half years, from Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in spring 1941 until the close of hostilities in September 1945.
Before the end of the war in the Pacific but after the Nazi surrender, George Patton was already not-so-quietly advocating rearming the Germans and uniting in an attack on the Soviet Union.
During the war, relations were cool at best. While the Soviets gladly accepted American supplies, they were often difficult when it came to releasing American nationals who fell into their hands, notably a crew of B-25 fliers from the Doolittle Raid on Japan who ditched at Vladivostok. American nationals were often held as “guests” and used as negotiating tools. (And if that doesn’t sound familiar, you’re not reading the newspaper enough.)
Prior to the German invasion of the U.S.S.R., many Americans equated the Soviet Union with totalitarianism and wanton agression. Stalin had signed a non-agression pact with Hitler prior to the outbreak of hostilities, and afterward had helped Germany carve up Poland. The Winter War of 1939-40 further soured American attitudes toward the U.S.S.R. I’ve never been clear on whether or not the U.S. openly supplied the Finns during that war, but somehow the Finns got American equipment, notably a number of Brewster Buffalo fighter aircraft. There is no question in my mind that Soviet agression helped spur the American re-armament drive of 1940.
The U.S.S.R., on the other hand, had good reason to dislike the United States. America more-or-less invaded the former Russian empire in 1917 and 1918, occupying Vladivostok and sending troops to Murmansk. The U.S.S.R. in turn was blamed for the Communist-inspired uprisings on the American West Coast in the late teens-early twenties (and, if I remember correctly, rightly so). After the Soviets were clearly established, the United States played a key role in stifling trade with the U.S.S.R.
To sum up, while the end of World War II clearly divided the world into two idealogically opposed camps, America and the Soviet Union always shared a certain antipathy. The “Cold War” was really a continuation of that antipathy, but it is much more easy to identify after the demise of the Axis powers.
(Im going to make this brief…I could go off about this, but I think a lot of what I would say has already been said)
Another reason that the United States (as seen at Yalta) became “enemies” of the Soviet Union, was because of the idea of self determination. When Poland wasnt allowed free elections, the US took a “proactive” approach to stopping the Soviets. So one could say THAT is when it started. Yadda yadda, I really think the Cold War started when the USSR began. American interests do not include being friends with communists, and regardless of being allies in WWII, the US has been in a cold war since the Soviet birth. It was just elevated at the outcome of WWII
At the end of the war against Germany the U.S. and Soviet armies met in the middle of Berlin.
Then the U.S. armies went home and the Soviet armies didn’t.
Then the U.S. said, “Wait a minute…”
Cool, SofaKing:
I’d add that the antipathy includes:
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traditional friction between Britain and the USSR dating back to the Great Game in Central Asia of the mid-19th century, and
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US and UK expansionist views in Asia Minor. Recalling the Treaty of the Dodecanese, but for Stalin, most of Greece would be speaking Turkish these days, for example.